WAR ON DRUGS UNJUSTIFIED

In response to "Drug laws necessary and logical" (Collegiate Times, Sept.
29): Cannabis has no lethal dose and its pharmacological effects have never
caused a single death in over 5,000 years of recorded history.

The unseen driving force against medical or unrestricted adult legalization
of cannabis is the fact that cannabis can't be patented. This precludes the
need for big business to be involved and that fact makes cannabis
commercially unattractive, pharmaceutically speaking.

It seems that if it can't be profited from successfully, the government
can't justify legalization even for the sick and dying.

Unfortunately, a change in current policy of prohibition would necessitate
that the alternative, legalization, reaps more profits -- seen and unseen --
than our present policy does.

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party
line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison and
military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, the CIA, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the politicians themselves, can not live without the budget
justification, not to mention the invisible profits, bribery, corruption and
forfeiture benefits prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement
policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed to
be inalienable according to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth, Fort Worth, Texas